"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Of the many bad ideas to emerge from feminism, few are as harmful as the attempt to de-stigmatize promiscuity. I say “attempt,” because the stigma will always remain, no matter how much rhetorical ammunition feminists unload at their target. Our basic sense of right and wrong tells us that screwing around — fornication, to use an old-fashioned word — is a bad idea, and is especially harmful to the interests of women. When you examine the anti-male rage of radical feminists, you find that most of their grievances can be traced to the emotional harms suffered by women in what is nowadays called “hook-up” culture. And these harms occur more frequently because so-called “pro-sex feminism” tells young women they can screw around without consequences. There is thus an internecine conflict between two feminist groups, the liberal “pro-sex” wing of the movement and those radicals who, in the 1980s, became known as “anti-sex” feminists. (This conflict was described, from a radical perspective, in the 1990 book Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism.) It is by no means unusual for a young woman to become a liberal feminist as a teenager excited about the “empowerment” of sexual “liberation,” only to shift to radical feminism after enduring the inevitable humiliations any young woman is apt to experience while chasing hedonistic thrills.

“You can sleep with hundreds and hundreds of people,
and as long as each encounter was special in its own way
— fun, consensual, full of mutual understanding
and respect — great, no problems there.”

When I encountered this remarkable claim in a video by British YouTube personality Hannah Witton, I was astonished. No intelligent person could really believe this, but “pro-sex” feminism involves a lot of allegedly clever young women (Ms. Witton is a mere 25) promoting such arrant nonsense to an Internet audience of teenage girls. This irresponsible advocacy of bad behavior contributes to the hypersexualized climate that is quite literally driving young women insane. The epidemic of mental illness among adolescent girls — depression, anxiety, eating disorders and even gender dysphoria — is a direct consequence of a perverse popular culture that shouts sex! sex! sex! at young people 24/7.

Now a new study shows a worrying rise in mental health problems among teenagers in the UK. According to the Department of Education, which spoke to 30,000 pupils aged 14-15, more than one in three teen girls suffer from anxiety or depression. It’s a rise of 10 per cent in the past decade, leading experts to call it a “slow-growing epidemic.”
Out of the girls surveyed, 37 per cent had three or more symptoms of psychological distress, for example feeling worthless or unable to concentrate, compared to 15 per cent of boys.

Of course, feminists are concerned about this, but how can feminism be the solution when feminism is so much of the problem? If the experts are serious about this mental-health “epidemic,” they need to address the problem of “pro-sex” propaganda from the likes of Hannah Witton:

Feminist rhetoric against “slut-shaming” requires a belief that promiscuity has no harmful consequences, either to the individuals involved or to society at large. Anyone who believes that is a fool. . . .
Ms. Witton has just published a book about sex — full of “anecdotes, confessions and revelations,” she promises — and any skeptical reader should ask, “What is the basis of her authority to dispense sex advice?” What makes Hannah Wilton any more knowledgeable about this subject than any other 25-year-old woman? In the Google Age, anyone can quickly access anything they really need to know on the subject of sex, so what sort of expertise can this young woman claim that would qualify her to lecture the rest of us? And if you’re offering advice on sex, shouldn’t success be a criteria? . . .

[…] Because Sluts Should Be Ashamed Of the many bad ideas to emerge from feminism, few are as harmful as the attempt to de-stigmatize promiscuity. I say “attempt,” because the stigma will always remain, no matter how much rhetorical ammunition feminists unload at their target. Our basic sense of right and wrong tells us that screwing around – fornication, to use an old-fashioned word – is a bad idea, and is especially harmful to the interests of women. […]